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eggs

July 17, 2008

It was a heartbreaking day when the last strip of Calvin and Hobbes ran. For years, Calvin provided daily humor, a reminder of the richness, excitement, wonders and terrors of childhood, instructions for crafting the perfect snowball, and more than anything else a message that felt personal and came in the form of quotes like this one below, spoken from Calvin to Hobbes while reviewing his personal appearance at bath time:

“If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously reexamine your life.”

That’s what the picture of Molly above reminds me of.

Green knees, juice-stained hands.

We got blackberries this week from the CSA along with sweet/sour cherries, a TON of chard, 1/2 lb of basil leaves and some big golden beats. We’re heading out of town for a wedding tomorrow, so I wanted to tackle a bunch of the chard tonight.

Enter the omelet and the frittata. Along with wraps and stirfries, they are at the top of our list for sheer ability in using up any leftovers, happily welcoming bits of vegetables and protein to the party.

In this case, I opted for a frittata and it wasn’t left over vegetables, but fresh chard. What follows is a description of the process, more than a recipe. The basic plan can be followed with all sorts of items in different quantities. Just don’t lose the onions or the herbs (um, or the eggs). They would be upset with you.

Throw in some toast, and you’re all set.

Chard Frittata With Fresh Herbs

- Heat an oven-safe pan over medium heat. Preheat oven to 350 (or use the broiler, but keep the rack towards the middle of the oven).

- Melt a couple TB of butter in the pan. While it’s melting, separate the stems and the leaves of the chard and thinly slice a small onion. Chop the stems thinly also and add the onions and stems to the pan along with a big pinch of salt. Cook for several minutes, until soft.

- Shred the chard leaves, add them to the pan with more salt and stir them in. Cook until tender.

- Beat 6-8 eggs (depends on how much other stuff you’ve got in there) with some cream/milk, salt and pepper. Add a bunch of minced fresh herbs – I used a little mint, a little more chives, and a lot of parsley.

- Add the eggs to the pan and tilt it to spread them around. Cook until the bottom is set, using a spatula to pull in the sides, allowing some of the uncooked eggs on top to move around.

- When the bottom is set and it appears to be cooked about halfway through, put the pan in the oven and cook until it’s done – you want the eggs somewhere between runny and overcooked. They will fall apart and get all watery and that would be bad. Better to take it out a little sooner than necessary. It can always go back in.

May 09, 2008

Is there anything better than having fresh eggs around? You have an instant meal, anytime of day. Scrambled eggs have always been my favorite, and still are. Tina and Molly are partial to the "dunkin' egg" - just a fried egg, over-easy, with a nice runny yolk. Although as of late, Molly has been requesting soft boiled eggs (also known as "the egg in the shell I can dunk my toast into"). Maybe there will be an all eggy post sometime in the future.

Usually for us eggs are a weekend thing, but we had an extended morning today (the best kind, eh?) and offered Molly an egg option for breakfast. She ended up with the plate in the photo above after some discussion:

"What kind of egg do you want Molly?"

"Hard boiled." Of which we had some.

"You want the kind you can peel and hold in your hand?"

"No, I want the hard boiled egg that I can dunk my toast in."

"That's a soft boiled egg"

"No it's not."

That went on for a while. The teenager-like attitude you can get from a 4 and a half year old is amazing. Anyway, she got her soft boiled egg, and promptly attacked it, leaving the wreckage behind:

Yikes. I swear she's a sweet, well-fed little girl and not an hungry velociraptor. Anyway, she seemed proud of her accomplishments. Good girl. Speaking of accomplishments, Tina made a really nice bag last night. She's pretty proud as well, prancing around the house this morning with it draped over her arm.

Note the label on the wine bottle has sufficient blur and shadows to obscure the details. Ha! Now no one will know the $7 bottle of dry french white I like for cooking (and drinking too). :)